If you
read my Top 10 of 2014 post, you'll know that Dark
Souls 2 ranks high on my list. I think it's a great game pretty
much any way you slice it, and I enjoyed all the time I spent completing the
main campaign. I had a few minor problems with it (of course!) but overall, it
was fantastic stuff.

I’ve
been waiting to crack into the DLC ever since it was announced earlier this
year, but due to review responsibilities and the demands of real life, I knew I
wouldn't have time for any of until right about… now --
everything that needs to be looked at has been looked at, the write-ups are
done, and the madness of the silly season has faded. And really, thank goodness
for that.

Anyhow,
I took the first available opportunity to jump into all three separate pieces
of DLC for Dark Souls 2: Crown of the Sunken King, Crown
of the Old Iron King, and Crown of the Ivory King.

For the record I completed all of the DLC, but
by ‘completed’ I mean finished the proper last boss and earned the crown from
each new section. I did not fight or defeat all of the optional bosses. These
DLCs were a bit strange for me because I thought the level design was basically
amazing in all three cases. On the other hand, I felt like the devs went off
the rails with the bosses. Almost all of them (especially the optional ones I
skipped) felt like they were intended to be fought in co-op, and
the difficulty was scaled too high. Coming to the content this long after
release, I found very few players available to be summoned into my game, and
most of the ones I did find were not up to the task at hand. It was rough at
times, to say the least.

Anyway, for those interested, here are my final
stats after wrapping up the final DLC, and brief summaries of each new
area follow below.

*

Crown
of the Sunken King: I heard some people say that they weren't satisfied with
this one, but I felt like it was a great place to start. This subterranean
level starts off with strong visuals – a tunnel opens up onto a chasm
overlooking a temple secreted away in a giant cavern. The devs also made no
secret of the fact that there is one big-ass dragon wandering around, and
you're going to meet up with him sooner or later.

This
level plays a lot with vertical space, and there are switches which raise and
lower platforms, granting access to different parts of the area. This level
also features new enemies, spirits that can't be damaged until the player find
their corporeal body hidden somewhere else in the level. Although I dreaded
running into them, I thought they were a cool idea, and it was quite satisfying
to finally find those bodies and rip them all up.

The
main boss is the giant dragon that I mentioned earlier. He’s quite mobile,
flying around the level and dishing out several swipe attacks and poison gas.
Although he looks impressive, I found it was really, really difficult to fight
him as a melee, non-magic character. It's not that he was necessarily that
difficult, but the camera struggled to keep up with him because he’s so large.
It was too hard to keep him on-screen long enough to be able to read his
attacks. I honestly don't think the Souls series is built to
handle enemies that large (I had the same problem fighting the Giant Lord in
the main game) and it was more difficult than it needed to be due to that
technical issue.

*

Crown
of the Old Iron King:
Another level that plays with vertical space. The entire area is set inside a
tall mountain spire with the inside hollowed out to make room for a giant
forge, elevators, and some metalworks. This section also features new ‘idols’
which must be destroyed, but the game didn’t a good job of explaining what they
are, or what their purpose was. I eventually figured it out by accident, but I
felt like it should've been introduced in a more concise way. This is also the
area where the developers play a lot with explosive barrels, and observant players
will find many opportunities to use flammable enemies to take out our larger
threats and expose secrets.

While I
enjoyed the area itself, I hit a massive brick
wall at the proper boss, the Fume Knight. The Knight is a tall melee combatant
with one short sword and one massive greatsword. It seems like a
straightforward battle at first and I had no problem getting past his initial
phase. However, once he gets down to about 50% life, his greatsword ignites and
the hitbox on it seems to multiply to an unreasonable degree. Of course he does massive damage with it, and even
one mistimed dodge pretty much ends things.

I have
to be honest, I was having real doubts as to whether or not I would be able to
finish him, and I tried a lot of things to get an edge; things like
experimenting with different weapons (my favored Drangleic Sword +5 was too
slow for this battle) and also started trying spears and other various things
with different ranges. I eventually decided to use the Black Scorpion Stinger
(a rapier) because it was so fast and I was able to enchant it with magic and
bring it up to +5 for a very decent level of damage. However, even with that, I
still wasn't able to get the job done.

Everyone
I talked to had different advice and I tried most of it, but there were two
things that put me over the top. First, @Maclark89 suggested I
put more points into my ADP stat. I had no idea what ‘iframing’ was but he
explained that with more points the window of invincibility during a roll was
widened, and that sounded like exactly what I needed. That definitely helped,
but the thing that made the biggest difference was that I eventually got
frustrated and used one of my rapidly-dwindling human effigies. I got lucky by finding a real person to summon who knew what the
hell they were doing, so between the two of us, we were able to make short work of
the Fume Knight. It was a huge relief… I was genuinely bracing myself for
the idea that I would never be able to finish.

*

Crown
of the Ivory King: Another excellent
level, this one is a huge castle complex with a small township at its base, and
the entire area is buried under a winter freeze. Snow covers everything, and
many parts of the level are closed off by huge ice accumulations blocking doorways
and clamping treasure chests shut.

The
twist in this area is that the final boss is a huge mob fight followed by a
large swordsman. The swordsman is quite easy compared to the other DLC bosses,
but getting through that mob was a nightmare. When starting the battle, the
game gives one friendly NPC to support you, but the damage it does is pretty
minimal, and the AI is not great. It took me a while to figure out, but there
are actually three other knights to be found in the level, so it's all about
finding these other NPCs to help -- a pretty neat idea, I thought. Once they've
been recruited, the fight becomes much more manageable and I blew through it in
short order.

Side
note, this level also holds an optional mission area the Frigid Outskirts which
I didn't even bother to try. I watched a video of it on YouTube and basically
said EFF that. Look it up for yourself if you want to see what
makes it so crazy, but it seems impossible without a second player, and in
general, it looks like FromSoft is (as the British say) taking the piss.

*

Overall,
these three pieces of DLC are generally excellent except for the difficulty
problem with some of the bosses (easily remedied if you have access to friends
able to join you) but one of the most satisfying things about completing this
content is that From decided to take a very small step away from the ‘cryptic,
don't-explain-anything’ stance they usually take, and they just came right out
and started explaining things. Some Souls hardcores might
object, but I've never been very interested in trying to puzzle together the
various pieces of lore into some kind of sensible theory… I mean, I don't need
a bunch of in-your-face cutscenes explaining everything, but I
don't think the series will be harmed by being a bit clearer
about certain aspects. Demon’s Souls actually did a great job
of that balance -- it was easy to follow, but there were definitely some
mysteries left by the time credits rolled. Dark Souls 2 is a
little more overt than Demon’s in the DLC, but I’m absolutely
not complaining.

Specifically, there's one NPC in Ivory King which tells the
player point-blank who she is and where she's from, and that information has a
lot to do with the main game. Following that, there is a lengthy discussion to
be had with King Vendrick once the player brings him all four crowns.
(Including Vendrick’s own, from the main game.)

Vendrick
gives a neat item reward for doing so, but the real win here (to me, anyway) was to be able to
chat with him and have him explain in perfectly clear terms about what he was doing and what happened
in Drangleic. It was a satisfying finish to an excellent game, and gave me some
of the closure that did not come in the main game. I mean, when I beat it for
the first time, I had no
idea who
the last boss was, or why I was fighting it. With these new bits of information
and some other things that I've come across recently, everything makes sense
and I have a newfound appreciation for the level of detail and the depth to
which the devs craft their worlds.

(One of
my favorite resources? The Dark Souls Two Podcast, highly recommended
for anyone who wants a deep, deep dive into the gameplay, level design and lore
of this specific game. Highly recommended)

At the end of the day, these three Crown DLCs
were all excellent additions to an already-excellent game, and are the kind of
additional purchases that I’m glad to make. I’d recommend the trio to anyone
who wants more Dark Souls 2, just be prepared for some very stiff,
borderline-unfair boss battles… If you plan to go through these new levels,
either be a complete badass, or be ready to summon some people
to help out.